Daily Archives: December, 17, 2012

Mass shootings are no more common than they have been in past decades, despite the impression given by the media.

In fact, the high point for mass killings in the U.S. was 1929, according to criminologist Grant Duwe of the Minnesota Department of Corrections.

Incidents of mass murder in the U.S. declined from 42 in the 1990s to 26 in the first decade of this century.

The chances of being killed in a mass shooting are about what they are for being struck by lightning.

Until the Newtown horror, the three worst K–12 school shootings ever had taken place in either Britain or Germany.

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Economists John Lott and William Landes conducted a groundbreaking study in 1999, and found that a common theme of mass shootings is that they occur in places where guns are banned and killers know everyone will be unarmed, such as shopping malls and schools.

I spoke with Lott after the Newtown shooting, and he confirmed that nothing has changed to alter his findings. He noted that the Aurora shooter, who killed twelve people earlier this year, had a choice of seven movie theaters that were showing the Batman movie he was obsessed with. All were within a 20-minute drive of his home. The Cinemark Theater the killer ultimately chose wasn’t the closest, but it was the only one that posted signs saying it banned concealed handguns carried by law-abiding individuals. All of the other theaters allowed the approximately 4 percent of Colorado adults who have a concealed-handgun permit to enter with their weapons.

“Disarming law-abiding citizens leaves them as sitting ducks,” Lott told me. “A couple hundred people were in the Cinemark Theater when the killer arrived. There is an extremely high probability that one or more of them would have had a legal concealed handgun with him if they had not been banned.”

Lott offers a final damning statistic: “With just one single exception, the attack on congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords in Tucson in 2011, every public shooting since at least 1950 in the U.S. in which more than three people have been killed has taken place where citizens are not allowed to carry guns.”

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…shortly after the Cinemark attack in Colorado, the manager of the nearby Northfield Theaters changed its policy and began banning concealed handguns.

While the perception in the wake of this year’s mass shootings has been that such acts are on the rise, the Associated Press found that it’s actually the exact opposite when you look at the data on a macro level.

“There is no pattern, there is no increase,” says criminologist James Allen Fox of Boston’s Northeastern University.

He adds that the random mass shootings that get the most media attention are the rarest.

While mass shootings rose between the 1960s and the 1990s, they actually dropped in the 2000s. And mass killings actually reached their peak in 1929, Grant Duwe, a criminologist with the Minnesota Department of Corrections who has written a history of mass murders in America, says.

Chances of being killed in a mass shooting, he says, are probably no greater than being struck by lightning.

The surest way I can think of that would reverse this trend would be for us to enact stricter gun control laws.

I live with a son who is mentally ill. I love my son. But he terrifies me.

A few weeks ago, Michael pulled a knife and threatened to kill me and then himself after I asked him to return his overdue library books. His 7 and 9 year old siblings knew the safety plan—they ran to the car and locked the doors before I even asked them to. I managed to get the knife from Michael, then methodically collected all the sharp objects in the house into a single Tupperware container that now travels with me. Through it all, he continued to scream insults at me and threaten to kill or hurt me.

That conflict ended with three burly police officers and a paramedic wrestling my son onto a gurney for an expensive ambulance ride to the local emergency room. The mental hospital didn’t have any beds that day, and Michael calmed down nicely in the ER, so they sent us home with a prescription for Zyprexa and a follow-up visit with a local pediatric psychiatrist.

We still don’t know what’s wrong with Michael. Autism spectrum, ADHD, Oppositional Defiant or Intermittent Explosive Disorder have all been tossed around at various meetings with probation officers and social workers and counselors and teachers and school administrators. He’s been on a slew of antipsychotic and mood altering pharmaceuticals, a Russian novel of behavioral plans. Nothing seems to work.

At the start of seventh grade, Michael was accepted to an accelerated program for highly gifted math and science students. His IQ is off the charts. When he’s in a good mood, he will gladly bend your ear on subjects ranging from Greek mythology to the differences between Einsteinian and Newtonian physics to Doctor Who. He’s in a good mood most of the time. But when he’s not, watch out. And it’s impossible to predict what will set him off.

Keep reading at the link… I have a child who is slowly dying of an incurable and fatal disease. But I’m constantly reminded that there are some parents who are dealing with even worse things. How awful it must be to know that you’re the parent of a child who may be capable of perpetrating a crime as heinous as the Newtown school massacre.

St. Louis County Police Chief Tim Fitch says after the shooting last week in Newtown it is time to arm the teachers.
Local KMOX reported:

St. Louis County Police Chief Tim Fitch says it is time to talk about arming civilian school personnel following Friday’s massacre in Newtown, Connecticut, comparing it to arming airline pilots after September 11, 2001.

You may be hearing about the automatic tax increases in the fiscal cliff, plus additional tax increases President Obama is negotiating with Speaker Boehner. But you won’t hear much about liberalism’s most powerful, and silent, redistribution tool: inflation.

How is inflation redistributive? While not actually taking from one and giving to another, inflation satisfies the first step of the two-step redistribution process:

Step One: Reduce the wealth of the bourgeoisie.

Step Two: Increase the wealth of the proletariat.

The liberals, progressives, communists (or whatever label you’re using these days) never achieve their redistribution goals, as they often fail at or before Step Two. But for them, this is okay. In their zero-sum world, a dollar taken from one must have been given to another. Therefore, the redistribution effort is seen as a success, by them and in hindsight, if only Step One occurred.

We have seen this before. Lenin triggered inflation to eliminate the Tsarist monetary system, which he planned to replace with centrally-managed rationing. He increased the money supply twenty-five fold. Lenin said:

The way to crush the bourgeoisie is to grind them between the millstone of taxation and inflation.

Inflation is triggered when either the money supply increases faster than the economy (quantitative easing), or when the supply of goods is reduced (Corn – biofuel demand plus the 2012 drought). Inflation causes uncertainty about future purchasing power, creates inefficiencies, and stifles productivity. Since the economy is a total of all goods rather than the total of all currency, the real money is not the $3 in your wallet but the gallon of milk in your fridge.

A Fox News year-end poll finds that a hefty majority of American voters are noting changes in the nation: 61 percent of U.S. voters are concerned that Obama administration policies “will move the country toward socialism”; 89 percent of Republicans and 38 percent of Democrats agree with that.

Another 42 percent of voters overall expect President Obama to be considered a great or good president; 7 percent of Republicans and 77 percent of Democrats agree.

In other words – many Democrats are happy with the slide toward Socialism….

You can help make the daily routine of our troops serving in Afghanistan and Iraq a little more bearable.

We’ve heard from countless members of the Armed Forces serving in the Middle East that one precious resource in short supply is quality coffee. That’s why Move America Forward wanted to send only the BEST GOURMET Coffee to the troops. And what better to enjoy with a cup of exquisite coffee but with name brand Oreo Cookies? Also included in MAF care packages are special treats from Jelly Belly jelly beans, part of our Candy Diplomacy Program.

Care Packages Include mostly Coffee, Cookies and Jelly Beans but could include any or all of the following: Finish reading, here.